The details of the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya are well known to us thanks to the press, books and films. But what happened before these events? What was Zoya like before the war - in childhood and adolescence?
Priest's granddaughter
Zoya was born on September 13, 1923 in the village of Osino-Gai in the Kirsanovsky district of the Tambov province. Her parents, Anatoly Petrovich and Lyubov Timofeevna Kosmodemyanskiy, were teachers. Zoya's father came from a family of priests, and earlier their surname was written as "Kozmodemyanskie". Zoin's grandfather, Peter Ioannovich Kozmodemyansky, was a priest of the Church of the Sign in the village of Osino-Gai. In August 1918, the Bolsheviks brutally killed him.
In 1930, the Kosmodemyanskiy family moved to Moscow. It seems that the sister of Lyubov Timofeevna, who served in the People's Commissariat of Education, bothered here. They settled on the very outskirts of the capital, not far from the Podmoskovnaya railway station (now the Koptevo district).
In 1933 Anatoly Petrovich died. Lyubov Timofeevna was left with two children - Zoya and her younger brother Shura.
"Strange" Zoya
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Zoya grew up an ordinary girl: she studied well, was fond of literature and history. In 1939, the girl was elected a Komsomol group group of the class. Zoya invited her classmates to take a social load - after school, to deal with the illiterate. The Komsomol members accepted her offer, but then began to shirk their responsibilities. At the meetings, Zoya began to work them out, and when the re-election came, she was no longer re-elected.
After that, the girl changed. Her classmate V. I. Belokun later recalled: “This story … greatly influenced Zoya. She began to gradually withdraw into herself. She became less sociable, loved solitude more. In the 7th grade, we began to notice, as it seemed to us, oddities even more often … (…) Her silence, her always pensive eyes, and sometimes some absent-mindedness were too mysterious for us. And the incomprehensible Zoya became even more incomprehensible. In the middle of the year, we learned from her brother Shura that Zoya was ill. This made a strong impression on the guys. We decided that we were to blame for this."
The myth of schizophrenia
In issue 38 of the newspaper "Argumenty i Fakty" for 1991, a note by the writer A. Zhovtis "Clarifications to the canonical version" was published, dedicated to the circumstances of the arrest of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. A number of readers' responses followed. One of them was signed by the names of doctors of the Scientific and Methodological Center of Child Psychiatry. It stated that in 1938-1939 Zoya was repeatedly examined at this center, and also lay in the children's department of the Kashchenko hospital with suspicion of schizophrenia.
However, no other evidence was found that Zoya suffered from or might have been mentally ill. True, quite recently, the well-known publicist Andrei Bilzho, a psychiatrist by profession, said that he had a chance to personally familiarize himself with the case history of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya at the Kashchenko hospital and that it was removed from the archives during perestroika.
What actually happened? According to the official version, at the end of 1940, Zoya fell ill with acute meningitis and was admitted to the Botkin hospital. After that, she underwent rehabilitation at the Sokolniki sanatorium, where, by the way, she met with the writer Arkady Gaidar, who was being treated there …
After perestroika, it became fashionable to debunk Soviet heroes. Attempts were also made to discredit the name of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who died martyrically at the hands of the Nazis, who for many years was considered a symbol of the courage of the Soviet people. So, they wrote that many of Zoe's actions are explained by the fact that she was mentally ill.
This refers to the arson of three houses in which the Germans stayed, in the village of Petrishchevo near Moscow. Like, the girl was a pyromaniac, she had a passion for arson … However, there was an order signed personally by Stalin to burn ten settlements near Moscow occupied by the Nazis. Among them was Petrishchevo. Zoya was not at all an "independent" partisan, but a fighter of a reconnaissance and sabotage group, and carried out the task given to her by the commander. At the same time, she was warned about the possibility of being captured, tortured and killed.
It is unlikely that she would have been accepted into the reconnaissance group if something was wrong with the psyche. In most cases, volunteers and conscripts were required to submit a medical certificate of health status.
Yes, after the death, the name of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was used for propaganda purposes. But that doesn't mean she didn't deserve her fame. She was a simple Soviet schoolgirl who preferred to go to torment and death in order to defeat the enemy.